Sweden's public prosecutor Hakan Roswall plans to charge the Pirate Bay's organizers with accessory and conspiracy to break copyright law, which could lead to fines or up to two years in prison. The charges will be filed in a district court on January 31. The Motion Picture Association of America and the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry are among those who have called for action to shut down the site. No copyright material is stored on Pirate Bay's servers. The Pirate Bay only manages torrent files, which contain the information needed to download film or music files from others. That has not stopped copyright sentences before. As TPB grows, it is only a matter of time before they fall, and when they do, it will be a huge blow to piracy. But it won't be a deadly blow.

"It's not merely a search engine. It's an active part of an action that aims at, and also leads to, making copyright protected material available. It's a classic example of accessory -- to act as intermediary between people who commit crimes, whether it's in the physical or the virtual world. Because the infrastructure is scattered among several places around the world... no separate country will be able to stop the site," said Roswall.

Pirate Bay was started by a Swedish anti-copyright group in 2003. Later the site was run by Peter Sunde, Gottfrid Svartholm and Fredrik Neij. Neij owns the domain. Sunde said there were no plans to shut down the site in the event of a conviction. He said he, Svartholm and Neij were unaware of the location of Pirate Bay's current servers.